I have prepared and reviewed thousands of small business tax returns and none of them have had ever had more than 50 pages, unless you were to attached printouts of the general ledger and journals, which would be senseless.

Takes a lot of pages to get out of paying your fair share. Cheaper to pay the accountant than your fair share, though. So, efficiency wins, right? Isn't the complex tax code for millionaires a market maker for tax accountants?

What is Romney's "fair share" or is this just your hackneyed way of saying "screw anyone richer than me"? You certainly can't say "screw the rich" because you and everyone else living in the Western world are rich.

While I think the complexity of our tax code can be called many things (and one can certainly can make a good argument for simplicity) I don't think the complexity of it is in itself any way "sick." What's "sick" is that the extremely wealthy can get away with paying less to the government as a % of income than a lowly grunt like myself while lobbying to cut the social safety nets and aid to the poor.

Hello Carl, You sound bitter, and I'd like to help you. I will ask a simple favor of you: to review some statistics of which you may be unaware.Perhaps you compare your tax situation to Romney's well-publicized tax rate of ~15%. And perhaps you've heard that Buffet's secretary pays a higher rate than he does. These comparisons certainly play well politically, but the numbers on the whole tell a very different story:

The Tax Foundation (taxfoundation.org) compared the total amount of taxes paid to the total amount of income over the various income ranges. This analysis yields the absolute effective tax rate by income range, which incorporates all exceptions and deviations, like Romney and Buffet.

So while the media will buffet us (ha! see what I did there?) with reports of these filthy rich bastards cheating everyone, it is simply not the case: The wealthiest on average pay higher tax rates, which of course means they pay a progressively heavier burden than lower earners. There will be exceptions, but it's disingenuous if not dishonest to focus on them. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to compare my taxes to the other 150 million filers.

By the way, what IS your tax rate? My wife and I, filing jointly, paid $19k in fed income tax on $144k AGI, just over 13%.

One more thing - Buffet's poor, tax-oppressed secretary? She owns a second home in sunny Arizona with a pool and putting green;)

Corporations lobby to get favorable treatment - shocking. It's like you've never heard of public choice before. The problem is compliant politicians who are more than happy to dole out political favors for huge campaign contributions and fancy trips to the Bahamas.

The US tax code abomination isn't the result of corporations, but corrupt politicians.

Well, yeah, the tax code is complicated, very, very much so. That's the difference between Economics and Political Economy. It is the Economist's task to turn the policy-maker's attention to inefficient and resource wasting policies, and suggest better ones.Noboy else will do it, as the Great Arnold Harberger said so eloquently in his famous 1988 speech "The Economist and the Real World" (speech given in Chile).

But, alas, policy-makers and politicians live in a different world; they live in a vote purchasing world, and voters very sheepishly comply. Voters like their little tax credits, tax deductions, tax favors. And voters again and again vote for it. Such a second (third?) best world is simply the price of democracy, because politicians will never, EVER, give up their power to purchase votes this way, and voters, sadly, will never, EVER, give up their willingness to *be* purchased in exchange for such favors.

That's it. We can publish as many papers as we wish in JPE, JPubEc, Econometrica, it won't make a difference.

The 547 pages is a reflection of the complexity of Romney's affairs and his pursuit of various tax loop holes. I agree that those tax loopholes should be closed so Romney can file a short return and pay 40% tax.

Ah, the 1040 return is nowhere near that long, the PDF with loads of attachments is only 203 pages. Some of the pages had less than a dozen words on them (some strange pages from Goldman Sachs accounts).

I copied the essential federal pages for a tax class and it was about 40 pages. It could of been even shorter (the computer kicked out multiple Schedule Cs).

Yes, the trust returns are long, but THEY ARE RICH, and they use aggressive planning strategies.

I may vote for Romney (in the hope that the John Taylors of the world then start militating for monetary stimulus). But Romney is so removed from average Americans who does not seem to understand that having Cayman Island bank accounts does not pass the smell test. And none of his sons (who he drags around the country) ever served a day in the military.

So, except for paying taxes or serving his sons up for GOP-inspired wars, Romney is a super-patriot.

And Romney is abjectly seeking approval from fundamentalists who regard his Mormonism as cultish.

Thanks to a few abusers I am now moderating comments. I welcome thoughtful disagreement. I will block comments with insulting or abusive language. I'm also blocking totally inane comments. Try to make some sense. I am much more likely to allow critical comments if you have the honesty and courage to use your real name.

Subscribe To

Follow On Twitter

Follow by Email

Follow with Feedly

About Me and This Blog

This is a blog of news, views, and commentary, from a humorous free-market point of view. After one too many rants at the dinner table, my kids called me "the grumpy economist," and hence this blog and its title.
In real life I'm a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. I'm not really grumpy by the way!